John Redmond's Last Years eBook

The Sixteenth Division were still on the sector about
Loos, and their casualties were heavy and continuous
in the perpetual trench warfare. With the last
days of August they were withdrawn—­for a
rest, as they believed at first; but their march was
southwards to the Somme.

The purpose was to use them for an attack on Ginchy;
but a shift of arrangements brought the 47th Brigade
into line against Guillemont and its quarries, which
had on six occasions been unsuccessfully attacked.
The Irish carried them. Three days later the whole
division was launched against Ginchy. They equalled
the Ulstermen’s valour, and were luckier in
the result. For these achievements praise was
not stinted. Colonel Repington in The Times
described the Irish as the “best missile troops”
in all the armies.

III

The deeds of Irish soldiers helped us greatly outside
of Ireland; in Ireland, the news was received with
mingled feelings. There was passionate resentment
against the Government, and the question was asked,
For what were their men dying? Redmond’s
answer could not be so confident as it would have
been six months earlier. There were many who
said that he dare not face the country. His answer
to this was given at Waterford, where on October 6,
1916, his constituents received him with their old
loyalty—­though now for the first time there
were hostile voices in the crowd. He spoke out
very plainly, saying with justice that in all his
life he had never played to the gallery and would not
now. Things had to be looked at squarely.

“We have taken a leap back over generations
of progress, and have actually had a rebellion, with
its inevitable aftermath of brutalities, stupidities
and inflamed passions.”

He would impugn no man’s motives, least of all
the motives of the dead; but those who had set this
train of events in motion had been always the enemies
of the constitutional movement. The constitutional
movement must go on, he said; but it would be folly
to pretend that it could go on as if nothing had happened.
Ireland must face its share in the responsibility.
But the real responsibility rested with the British
Government.

To establish this he entered on a review of the whole
series of circumstances, not omitting Ulster’s
preparations for civil war, and stressing heavily
the mischief that was done when Sir Edward Carson was
chosen “by strange irony” to be the First
Law Officer of the Crown.

Passing from his review, he issued grave warning against
the idea of conscription: it would be resisted
in every village and its attempted enforcement would
be a scandal which would ring through the world.
For Ireland also he had admonition. He had told
them before that Home Rule was an impregnable position.
But “no fortress is impregnable unless the garrison
is faithful and united.”